Memento Mori
by here's wonderwall
Summary: The world ends on a Tuesday; Caroline goes on. A darker take on the timetravel trope.
1. The last days of summer

Picks up after 4x22

* * *

><p><strong>New York, 2011<strong>

* * *

><p>The world ended on a Tuesday.<p>

As weekdays went, Caroline figured it could have been worse. It wasn't as cliché as a dying on a Monday morning, not as lame as not surviving the weekend, not really as annoying as dropping dead on a Friday night. No, Tuesday was more than okay – except for, you know, the dying part; especially when she'd been counting on being around for a long, _long_ time. Sometimes, she decided, fate _really_ is a bitch.

It all happened innocently enough, at two in the morning in a New York bar where Caroline was busy sipping on a Blue Angel and flirting subtly across the room with the guy who'd send it over – a coy smile here, a wink there, but nothing too obvious. She was, after all, _spoken for_ – by a guy who'd gone and disappeared, okay; but Tyler was still her boyfriend, and Caroline knew she wouldn't go any further than smiles, glances, and sexual frustration.

"Oh, I know that look, doll," Brady called, appearing next to her. "Who'd getting his heart broken tonight?"

"Maybe you are," she retorted. "Where did Valerie go, anyway?"

Valerie, a histroy grad student, was Brady's fling of the night; she had red hair, and _amazing_ taste in clothes.

"She went home, I guess," Brady said, following Caroline's gaze to Blue-Angel-guy, playing darts in a corner. "Sleeping off the blood loss."

He winked. Brady was handsome, not quite in that intense, tortured-soul sort of way she was used to, but rather just plain _hot_, with his leather and ink black hair and tattooed guitarist fingers, to the point that sometimes Caroline was almost tempted to say _to hell with everything_ and just go for it. Him. Whatever.

"And now I'm all alone, and all yours."

Caroline had to laugh at that. "Cheers!"

Brady was from New Zealand, not quite a century old, and with a stupid habit of frowning that reminded her of Stefan. He'd been living in New York for a couple of years, and had self-appointed as Caroline's tour guide only a couple of day after they'd first met, on the first week of her summer vacation – or, as Caroline liked to call it, the first day of the rest of her life.

She'd gone to New York because she'd never been, and because why the hell not. Bonnie was on her extended family holiday, Stefan off-the-radar, Tyler MIA, Elena lost in her honeymoon bliss – and poor little Caroline was at home with her mom, making plans to set up her dorm room and the rest of the human life she'll have to pretend through.

And so she'd packed and went on a road trip, because if even Elena had gone out of Virginia – _Elena Gilbert_, who'd only ever wanted a boring life – then Caroline had really no excuses. As road trips went, though, hers hadn't been much of one. She'd fallen in love with New York and decided to stay a while – after all, she had all the time in the world – and then she met Brady at that vampire bar Damon had told her about, and the rest was history.

Theirs was an easy friendship, a casual thing made of chance encounters and convenience, so different from the fire-forged bonds she had with her friends back home. There was nothing life-or-death about Brady; and Caroline hadn't realized how much she'd missed that simplicity until they'd met.

"Okay, so," he began. "Tomorrow, I was thinking this Thai place I know. You haven't tasted real Thai until you've been at Decha's –"

" – or in Thailand," she quipped in.

"Or, been to Thailand," he conceded. "But that's kinda far."

She found herself smiling at him. He really _was_ cute, almost enough to make her give up on a relationship she'd put so much in, but Caroline Forbes was anything but a quitter, even if Tyler forgot to call_ all the time_ and barely even answered and – _ugh_.

"Caroline," Brady's amused voice brought her back to reality. "Don't look now, but that guy is coming over here. How about a strategic retreat?"

"Yeah," she nodded, enthusiastically. "Let's."

They were barely out of the bar when Brady fell over, dead.

* * *

><p>The end of the world started on a Tuesday, at two in the morning, as Brady Wilson slumped down in a back alley and fell over, skin grey as ashes and a trickle of blood running from his mouth.<p>

Technically, Caroline would learn later, the end of the world had been going on for almost thirty-two hours by then, starting with Silas and a coven of New Orleans witches and ending up with a vampire-induced wave of mass suicides on Tuesday afternoon; but she didn't know that yet. There and then, Caroline's first reaction was panic.

She knew what Brady's death meant. She'd seen Sage's corpse, after all, saw her stumble and fall over and die in the exact same way and if Brady was dead _like that_ then –

The originator of Brady's bloodline, whoever it was, had died just over an hour ago.

Caroline ran. She let Brady's body where it was, flashing away in a blur – _you shouldn't run like that around here, Caroline,_ Brady had told her on the first day, _too many cameras around_, but it was an emergency and someone would find thousands of vampire bodies in the morning and _to hell_ with caution.

Her hotel room was too far, so she just broke into the first apartment she saw, searching for clothes – heels and cute black dress wouldn't cut it, not now. Thanks god she'd let her car parked out of town, because driving through it would take too damn long, and Caroline had never let Tyler teach her how to hotwire a car 'just in case'.

_I will_, she told herself. _First thing, tomorrow morning._

If she lived that long.

Caroline found her car and hopped in, driving like crazy towards Mystic Falls, wondering all the while if she would even make it that far, wondering if she was going to die. She clutched her phone in her hand, dialling Tyler's number – _pick up pick up pick up_.

He didn't.

Sage had only lasted one hour after Finn's death, and so had her friends – but _why_ one hour? Caroline had never bothered to find out. Did all vampire just drop dead at the same time, or the older ones died first? "Gee," she whispered to herself. "Think happy thoughts, Forbes."

In the meanwhile, she tried Tyler again.

_Pick up pick up pick up_.

She called Elena next, then Damon – a ring and another and another; no voice on the other side. Was that…good? Bad? She tried her mom next, but Liz had been picking up all the night shifts lately, because the money was better and Whitmore expensive. Tyler again. _Pick up the damn phone_.

As she drove, Caroline tried not to think of the fact that one of the Originals must be dead.

She had no idea how what could have happened, and how. Rebekah was out of the country – hell, she was out of the country with Matt, of all people, panning to do nothing more dangerous than climbing up the Wall of China – and Klaus and Elijah in Louisiana, with no threats that she knew of, and wouldn't have died easily.

_Especially not Klaus_, she found herself thinking, then wondering if the regret she felt at the thought was because she would die with Klaus, too – or if maybe she was just mourning the future that never was, the endless possibilities of what might have happened. Brady'd had a century on her, given or taken a decade or so, and if whatever it was that killed him moved through the bloodline, she figured she would know it pretty soon.

But Caroline did not want to know. She did not want to crawl in a corner and wait to die like the helpless little girl she no longer was, she had to _do_ something, and hope it wasn't too late. She ditched her car on the side of the road close to a rest area and snatched herself a new one, the fastest-looking she could see in the parking lot, driving away without a hint of regret as the cell phone rang and rang and rang.

_Pick up_, she thought. _Pick up, pick up._

_Pick up_.

Come dawn, Tyler still hadn't picked up the phone, but Caroline wasn't dead.

* * *

><p>She arrived in Mystic Falls to see a witch waiting on her doorstep.<p>

"Caroline Forbes," the woman said, slowly, giving her a smile that was nothing if not predatory. "Remember me?"

Caroline remembered Lucy Bennett, of course. How could she not?

She was sitting on her porch, tapping lightly on the grass with one foot, arms crossed under her chest. Impatient. Lucy was staring at Caroline like she just turned up late for some important appointment, which – _no way_. Not after she'd driven all the way from New York City like a madwoman, and getting almost arrested once or twice.

"Miss Forbes," she repeated, more harshly, standing up. Not rude, but straight to the point, a woman on a mission. "Do you know who I am?"

"Yes," Caroline swallowed, and whatever temporary calm she'd managed to regain during her drive went away under Lucy's intense scrutiny. She didn't believe in coincidence, and a long-lost Bennett witch turning up in Mystic Falls the same day one of the Originals died is enough to make her more than wary. "You're… Bonnie's cousin, right?"

"Right," she nodded. "And you are Bonnie's vampire friend. We need your help."

That sounded like a cliché action movie one-line if she'd ever heard one, and Caroline was about to make a quip when she realized the full impact of Lucy Bennett's words. "We," she repeated. "As you and…?" Bonnie's cousin she might have been, but if there was something Silas had taught them all was that not all witches were as good as they liked to pretend.

But Lucy was staring just above her shoulder, and Caroline turned around to see Elijah standing right behind her, looking even more solemn than usual.

It hit her then that Rebekah must be dead.

"Silas," he said, reading the questions in her eyes. "I heard he got her to come back from Dublin and then – "

Caroline looked at the man in front of her, this proud immortal with shaky hands and an even shakier voice, and sat down on the porch, slowly. She had never really talked to Elijah, has never even been _in the same room_ as him, but even she could tell that he looked desperate and on edge and downright _murderous_.

Murderous, she couldn't help but notice, and _defeated_. Like some part of him has already given up; and that scared her most of all. She wondered how Klaus must be – and where _the hell_ was Klaus?

"I'm sorry," she head herself say. "I'm so, so sorry."

Caroline had never cared much for Rebekah Mikaelson before. With her blonde hair and blue eyes and bitchy smiles, the Originals had always seemed to Caroline like a prettier, stronger, _better_ version of herself; and in her needy attitude Caroline had always seen an echo of the insecure, pathetic girl she'd been, once – the girl she so desperately wanted to forget.

And still she couldn't – couldn't help but look at Rebekah, beautiful and fearless and so utterly _bitter_, so capricious and jealous and cruel, and see a reflection of the woman she might become, someday, embittered by centuries of loneliness and heartbreak and never being the first choice and – god, it had always been so much easier to hate her.

Elijah acknowledged her words with a nod, and Caroline found herself wondering if he even believed she'd meant it. _I do_, she wanted to assure him, _so much_, because Rebekah was the same kind of lost girl that she was, a nervous wreck of loneliness and need, and Caroline wanted to scream that she understood, she'd been like that once, too, and her greatest fear had been that no one would cry for her when she'd be gone.

"So, Silas," she said instead, standing up again – and as calm as you please, even though she was dying inside. "How is that even possible?"

"I don't know the specifics," he answered. "And, to be quite frank, I don't care. He wants the veil lowered again, I assume, found some loophole or another, and enlisted the help of a few powerful witches in exchange for the promised to rid the world of vampires." His lips twitched slightly in what had to be the driest smile Caroline had ever seen, and she understood – that'd been Esther's plan all along, brought to completion by the monster they himself had woken up.

"He has the White Oak stake," Elijah added, unnecessary as it was, "and… no qualms about using it."

His voice was flat, and Caroline flashed back to that day in Elena's living room, a charred body on the floor, and Klaus's empty eyes.

She felt guilty all of a sudden, but couldn't deal with it; not right now. "And you need _me_," she asked, not bothering to hide her scepticism. She most definitely didn't want to bury her head under the sand and wait to die, but she didn't think she could be much help against _Silas_, either. "How?"

Lucy laughed.

Caroline threw her an annoyed look because, _hey_, it was good to see that Lucy seemed to agree with her – but there were nicer ways to go about it. Elijah was more diplomatic about it; and she could almost see why Elena liked him so much.

"Truth be told, we came here looking for Miss Bennett, for some help with the spell –" he began, not saying which spell, or what it was for, and Caroline privately wondered if there even _is_ a spell that will work at this point. "And for Mister Salvatore, and Elena, for… other parts."

"Bonnie left with her mom," Caroline explained – _and won't take even a stupid call_. "And I think Elena and Damon might have gone at the lake house," and she told herself that for once she didn't much care that she'd been once again chosen after Elena, because it was _Elijah_ doing the choosing, someone she didn't even _know_. She tells herself it didn't sting, even when it did. Because, seriously, what did _Elena_ have that Caroline did not – against _Silas_, of all people?

Lucy's voice shook her from her reverie.

"That's a pity, Elijah," she said, like Caroline wasn't even _there_. How the hell did they know each other, anyway? "But you know we're on a schedule here. She will do."

End of the world alright, but she'd never really learned how to keep her temper under control.

"Excuse me." Caroline's voice sounded closer to a bark, even to her own ears. "Would you terribly mind explaining me what the _fuck_ you're talking about?"

The witch rolled her eyes and suddenly Elijah was standing right in front of her, way too close for comfort, looking at her with something she could only describe as fascination – like she was some code he needed to crack, some dismantled mechanism he wanted to put back together. Caroline stared back, refusing to let herself be intimidated.

"I see why my brother was so fond of you," he said then, slowly, whatever the hell _that_ meant. _Was fond of you_, sure – more like _obsessed_, and stalker-ish, and maybe, just maybe, _someday…_ but it didn't matter, not right now.

"You will help us now," Elijah continued, "won't you?"

And his question managed to sound more like a thread, but Caroline didn't particularly care. She froze, replaying Elijah's words in her mind – and the one that'd caught her attention, brought back all the nagging thoughts she's been trying to ignore since everything began. _I can see why my brother was so fond of you_.

"_Was_?"

And now she just –

_No_, Caroline thought, taking a step back. _That's impossible_.

Elijah didn't say anything at first, that defeated look back in his eyes – and _how_ could one man look so distraught? It was almost painful to watch. It wasn't a confirmation, but close enough. "Is Klaus…" she needed to stop and take a breath. "Is he dead?"

Because Klaus _couldn't_ be dead. He'd been around forever and always would be, like a particularly annoying constant of life. Klaus was… _Klaus_, her affectionate stalker and former enemy and uneasy ally, and he knows everything and can do anything and he. Could. Not. Be. Dead.

Elijah closed his eyes; and when he reopened them he looked perfectly composed again_. How does he do it_, she wondered – an wasn't fun, how she still had an eye for details at a moment like this? "Not yet," he said. "But Silas has him. He will be soon enough."

"And you're _here_?" her outburst surprised her. She didn't even _like_ Klaus, the annoying, murderous bastard, the impossible man she couldn't bring herself to forget. The last love of her life, he'd promised her; and, for all of Caroline's protests, she has grown fond of the idea, in the back of her mind, that one day – no matter where or when – they would find each other. Eternity was such a long time, after all, and everything was possible – and now, all was gone.

"Your brother is dying," she repeated, and didn't really care that her voice was staring to crack, eyes prickling; and she didn't know why. "And you're _here_?"

And then she realized, it didn't matter if Klaus died, because soon enough she would be dead, too. And Tyler, and Elena, and Stefan, the lot of them – and tears fell through her face, for whom she didn't know. For Klaus, perhaps, or for herself; for the people she'd leave behind or for the ones who would follow her in death.

In all that, Elijah was _smiling. _Maybe he'd had enough and flipped for good, Caroline thought. The man was clearly as crazy as the rest of his family – only they were all dead now, weren't they?

But he did not look like a madman. Desperate, perhaps, and clinging to his sanity by the tips of his fingers, but more than anything he looked _determined_. "I pick my battles, Miss Forbes" it's all he said. "With Silas, I could lose. _Would_. Here…" god, that smile was _terrifying_.

"Here I'm going to win."

* * *

><p>Elijah spun her a wonderful, mad story as he drove her stolen car to the outskirts of town, Lucy frowning in the backseat, and Caroline almost wondered if maybe Rebekah's death hadn't sent him over the edge, because this plan – this story was <em>crazy<em>. Except that she'd seen an immortal being opening a portal between the world of death and that of the living, so she could see Elijah's point, kind of.

The Original parked the car next to the mansion, the one she'd thought Klaus would have closed up before moving to New Orleans, but there were no white sheets on the furniture when they came it, and Lucy seemed to know her way around like she'd been here before. Caroline barely paid her attention, trying to make sense out of Elijah's words.

"So, _time travel_," she said, not really deadpanning but close enough because, _seriously_? Okay, there was a veil to the Other Side and the world might have been ending, but this was almost too weird. "_That_ is what you're going with?"

"Indeed," Elijah answered, cool enough to be downright _scary_. Next to him, Lucy had started on – _whatever_ she was going to do, with chanting and burning candles and that creepy rapture-y look she'd come to know so well. Caroline's eyes went from the witch to Elijah, looking as though he could have been made out of stone, and she swallowed.

"Right," she continues. "And you need _me_, why?"

"Guidance," he told her, still as vague as always – and, _wow_, she would have almost felt flattered if she hadn't known for a fact that she'd been Elijah's last resort for the whole thing, coming in even after Damon-fucking-Salvatore. And, Damon had one century and a half on her, but he just _sucked_ at planning. Klaus would have known that – but Klaus wasn't there now, was he?

"You will help us avoid this – _situation_," Elijah continued, and there he made a face, raising one eyebrow just the right way to convey as much distaste as possible.

"Right," Caroline repeated, feeling _really_ out of her depth. She eyed Lucy sideways, but the woman was still busy with her spell, mumbling and whispering and looking like she wouldn't have noticed if the building went out in flames. "So, time travel," she repeated. "That's… actually possible?" Caroline found it hard to believe that Klaus hadn't tried anything like it before.

"Theoretically, yes."

It was Lucy – out of her trance or whatever it had been, looking sweaty and sick and just plain _awful_, dark circles under her eyes. "Esther thought it could be done –" and_ of course_ it would be Esther, how predictable. "But it's dangerous, and requires… much power."

Caroline had a pretty good idea of what _power_ could mean, for all that she'd have preferred to forget. Sometimes, with her eyes closed, she could almost hear Klaus's voice in her head – _twelve grave for twelve witches, like it never happened_.

"Twelve more minutes," Lucy added, nodding at Elijah before rubbing her hands against her face, closing her eyes. She looked _sick_ – not just tired, like Bonnie often did whenever she tackled a particularly hard spell, but honest-to-god sick, like someone who'd just been through a long stint in a hospital. _Or a zombie_, Caroline added to herself.

"So, power," she told Elijah. "That's… sacrifices, right?" Her voice didn't tremble as he nodded, not even a bit. And, as much as she wouldn't have wanted to admit this in front of her mother, if Caroline had to pick between the almost total annihilation of the vampire race, herself and her closest friends included, and the deaths of some random, faceless people she'd never met…

Only, there was a distinct lack of future sacrificial victims around the house.

"How many people?" she heard herself ask, as if she were discussing the weather – _cloudy, with a good chance of a storm_.

"Hopefully enough," Elijah said. "Don't worry, Miss Forbes. They won't be dead where you're going."

_Where you're going_. But why her, even if it was too late to get Elena or Damon. Why not… "Why don't you go?" she asked Elijah, and he gave a surprised blink in her direction, looking almost _human_. "I mean, wouldn't that make things simpler?"

He just _stared_ at her for what felt like forever, as the second dragged on and Klaus – and Caroline – got one minute closer to death. "That would make things... complicated," he Elijah said, eventually. "But this way, you'll rewrite history. It will be as if all this had never happened."

"And what about me?" Caroline felt suspicious all of a sudden. Sure, Elijah might look classy and Elena might like him, but he was still an Original, professional backstabber and survivalist. To him, someone like Caroline Forbes must be nothing but collateral damage. "Won't there be two of _me_ running around?"

_And won't Klaus would like that, _some forgotten, sarcastic corner of her mind muttered. _Just enough of me to go around to make everyone happy_.

"I can guarantee, Miss Forbes," there was the barest hint of a smile on Elijah's lips, "that where you're going, there won't."

"Six minutes," Lucy cut in, shivering violently. She looked _terrible_, reminding Caroline of a desiccated vampire – and she realized, suddenly, that Lucy Bennett wasn't meant to survive this spell. Was _she_ the sacrifice? Somehow, it didn't seem nearly enough.

"How many people?" she asked again, harshly this time. Caroline didn't want to know, god she didn't – but she _had_ to.

Elijah didn't meet her eyes, why she'd never know. "The New Orleans witches captured Niklaus and delivered him to Silas two days ago," he begins. "Rebekah died yesterday. In the meantime… I gathered and made about three hundred vampires, and instructed them."

_Instructed them_. He meant compelled – to do what? To kill people, all at the same time? But not, that couldn't be it. Even she knew enough about Elijah to expect him to do something more subtle than sending out blood-crazed new-born vampires to slaughter the masses.

"Four minutes."

And then, she knew.

"To kill humans?" Elijah shook his head. "To compel humans then…." Caroline said, eyes widening. "To… die at the same time?" Three hundred vampires, one entire day. How many people wold die in four minutes? Thousands, tens of thousands? As many as there were vampires left in the world? "To compel humans to kill themselves… at the same time." And probably in some crazy ritual that would help their spell and god that was just _sick_ –

And then, just as Elijah started to nod, Caroline felt the world spin all around her.

There was hard wood against her cheek and blood in her throat and blood in her mouth and Caroline could almost feel her body shutting down. Dying, but then again, she'd been living on borrowed time to begin with, and undead parasite. _Death's catching up_, she thought – but it had only been one year, and she'd been promised forever…

_A day, or a century_.

And then, she knew.

"Klaus's dead, isn't he?"

Had been dead for a while now, and she hadn't known. How odd. Klaus's death had always seemed like such a life-changing event, even back before they'd known he would take them all with him to the grave – and still Klaus had just gone like that, slipping away quietly; and she hadn't felt any different, and neither had Elijah.

Klaus Mikaelson had died, and the world still gone on.

"Be delicate," Elijah was saying, "she might not survive if she makes it back too early, it has to be after, but just immediately –"

"What are you talking about?" Caroline asked, or tried to – it came out as a sort of mumble, and she tried desperately to remember how long it had took Sage to die. Three minutes left to.. whatever that was. She could last three more minutes.

She had to.

"Elijah," she tried to look up at him, slumped on the floor as she was, caught a glimpse of hard eyes and lips pressed into a thin line. "Elijah, what is it?"

Elijah did not answer, but suddenly he was crunched on the floor next to her as Lucy started to chant once again, eyes trailed on hers as he took her head in his hands, brushing her sweaty hair away from her face. "Miss Forbes," he said, not unkindly. She would remember that in the centuries to come; because it was the last kindness Elijah Mikaelson ever showed her.

"Caroline. Look at me."

And when she did, she found that she could not look away.

_Oh please not_, she thought, the hopeless pleas of a helpless little girl, a human, weak and fleeting – and _shallow_, and _useless_. _Not again;_ but Elijah's eyes were so mesmerizing, pupils unnaturally wide, and Caroline couldn't even speak, her will no longer her own. "You will find me, wherever you are, whenever you are, you will look for us and you _will_ find me."

"I will find you," she heard herself say, from so far away, and she knew she was doomed. "Wherever I am."

"You will assist us however you can," he continues, and Caroline could almost feel that cord tightening around her neck, like the scarf Damon used to make her wear. "Answer my questions, and do as I say when I ask you."

And he blinked, and she was free again – only not really, she was not free and now she never would be.

Elijah, oh-so-honorable, and just as damn manipulative and cold as the rest of them.

"You son of a bitch." She recoiled, shivering. "I _hate you_," Caroline told him, or thought she did, because one minute she was laying on the floor of the Mikaelson mansion, dying, Elijah hovering above her –

and the next she was alive and well, laying on _something_ else, and _god_ it prickled –

And when she opened her eyes there was nothing but branches and leaves and hints of blue sky, and she was sprawled on some sort of brush, the forest thick all around her.

Completely alone.

* * *

><p>It did not take Caroline long to figure out what'd happened. She wasn't dead which meant Klaus was alive, which meant that the spell had worked – and there she spared a thought to the many, many people who'd had to die to make her little trip happen – and now she was somewhere else, some<em>time <em>else, away from everything and everyone she'd ever known and with no plan to make it back, but she was Caroline Forbes, dammit, and she would survive this like she'd survived everything else life had thrown at her. And so what if she was stranded? She'd take the long way back, and good riddance.

But first thing first –

she had to find Elijah. _Damn_. He'd told her to find him, compelled her to do so, and now she had to, even though the only thing she'd have liked to do with Elijah was to stab him through the heart, or get someone else to do it for her. If she closed her eyes she could feel the pull, dragging her away – somewhere, _anywhere, _with no idea where to begin.

Still, it wasn't much different from the bloodlust she'd felt in her first few weeks as a newly turned vampire. She'd survived _that_, she could do anything. Elijah, Caroline noticed, hadn't really been specific with his instructions, and she was absolutely _great_ at finding loopholes. So, yes, she would find him – but not right now. There was no reason to rush; she had all the time in the world.

All the time in the world.

_However long it takes_, she thought to herself, and smiled a bitter smile.

The day turned into night, and then the sun dawned once again; and Caroline was still walking, wandering without a destination.

She was pretty sure she was going in circles, but there was no way to know – the stupid trees were too damn thick to even walk through, every step a pain, with no way to know for sure where she was going. She had enough sense to know she should pick a direction and stick to it, but her sense of direction was limited to knowing that the sun rises in the east, and that was only doable half the time.

It was mid-morning during the second day when Caroline arrived to a hill of sort, terrain rising slightly. _That's good, right?_ Maybe she would see where she was going if the hill went up enough. In any case, it couldn't be worse that the green hell she was stuck in.

Thirty-odd hours lost in god-only-knew-where, whenever, with boring trees and sticky air and those damn bugs crawling all over her. Caroline already missed her home and comforts more than she'd ever thought possible; her car and her bed and her hot shower at the end of a long day. Her sneakers were good and comfortable, but still not hiking equipment. Caroline Forbes was such an indoor kind of girl; and now her hair was flying madly everywhere and she thought she might be starting to smell; and, more than anything, she missed her mother.

She cried herself to sleep that second night because, of all her lost opportunities, Liz Forbes was the greatest one. Their relationship had never even started until after she'd died, and then she'd been too busy fighting for her life every other week to take a moment for herself, too immersed in her friends' life-or-death dramas to care about anything else. Caroline's mind went back to those past few years, and she cried for all the moments that wouldn't be coming back, all the things she could have done and didn't, all the things she should've said and kept to herself.

"I love you, mommy."

Her voice broke the silence, and Caroline hadn't realized just how quite everything was until she spoke. It was the first time she heard a human voice since Elijah's, the first time she's heard such a loud noise since the muffled sounds of the deer she'd feed on that morning – and wouldn't Stefan like that? "I think I ate Bambi's mom," she said out loud, tasting the words on her tongue, the ways they broke the uneasy quiet of the forest. "How 'bout that, Stefan?"

This silence was so loud, she thought she might be going mad.

There were a few drops of dried blood on her pants, and it was like some itch she couldn't scratch, because who knew when she would get the chance to clean them. "For future reference, Caroline," and, hell, she's starting to love the sound of her own voice; that must be why crazy loners in the movies like to talk to themselves so much. "Next time, be more delicate."

_Be delicate_, she remembered Elijah's words from just before she left. To Lucy. Something about – not sending her too early, but just after. Just after.

And then it clicked, finally. She'd never left; she'd been in Mystic Falls the whole time.

Like a turn-on of the metaphorical light-bulb; suddenly she understood everything. She'd woken up where Klaus's house had been – would be, in this virgin terrain untouched by human hands – and those are the falls, she was going up to the same place she'd been countless time before, the location of a thousand high school parties.

_Just_ _after_.

And there was only one _after_ Elijah would care about, and Caroline scolded herself for being so, so _stupid_. Of course Elijah would take advantage of the occasion to look after his own interests –sending himself a message through time to watch out for Silas was all good and well, but she should've known he would never have stopped there. _Guidance_, he'd told her, and in hindsight it's was so damn _obvious_ what he'd meant. The bastard had gone the whole nine yards, and shipped her off to the dark ages.

_Just after_… just after their transition, and whatever mess went down there. During the most intense, most delicate time of a vampire's life, a messy confusion of trial and error and _thirst_ – and why not to send someone who'd already gone through it, someone he'd made damn sure couldn't say no. Why not to get himself a minion with a thousand-odd years of future knowledge crammed into their brain, and no choice whatsoever but to do as he said.

"You know what, Elijah," Caroline spat out, wishing_ so hard _he could be there to hear her. "Fuck you." And his so-called honor, and his entire, _annoying_ family, and their stupid compulsion. "You're worse than even Klaus, you disgusting, _manipulative_ asshole."

It took Caroline ten full minutes before she was out of insults, and feeling only marginally better. She breathed in, slowly, and looked around, really looked around. If those were the falls – she had no way of knowing for sure until she made it to the top, not with how thick the forest around her was. Caroline tried to imagine how it must look from the sky, how the entire continent must look, deserted, endless miles of untouched growth – and failed. She'd never felt smaller than she did in that moment, or more alone.

"Right," she told herself, shaking her head to focus. If those were the falls, then she wasn't that far from the Lockwoods' place. No Lockwood would live anywhere near those falls for hundreds of years, but whatever settlement there was had to be close. With her mind made up, Caroline ran.

She was running like she'd never had before, too concerned about people watching, or looking human, or some security camera catching a glimpse. She ran faster than she'd had in New York, when she'd been fearing for her life, not caring that _really_ it wasn't the best way to move through all the stupid trees, ignoring the scratch and burns of the brushes and undergrowth ripping through her clothes, making her bleed.

Her wounds healed fast, after all, and Caroline needed to _be sure._

There was no sun in the sky to mark the east so late into the night and she still got lost, but her sheer speed was enough that it doesn't matter. She changed direction and ran again, and again; now that she knew where she was, it was all just a matter of time.

The sky had faded to a dull steel color when she found it, the village she didn't know she'd been looking for. It was like something straight out the set of a period movie, and still at the same time so much different from what she'd imagined, with its too-small huts covered in dry grass.

And then then the wind changes, and she could _smell_ it.

Death; the whole place reeked of it. She strained her ear, and still couldn't hear the sound of a single heart beating but her own. There was nothing left in this place, no one left alive.

_Just after_, Elijah had said, and it looked like she'd gotten there too late. Here she was, lost and alone, in the birthplace of the Originals; and they were gone.

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><p><strong>AN:** I'm so, so sorry for the infodump in this chapter. It will get better.

So, basically, I found this story partly-written in my hard drive, dated about eighteen months ago - you know, back when writing Caroline-time-travels story was the height of cool. Fair warning: the whole reason why I started writing this in the first place was that I couldn't find a time travel story that was semi-realistic and dark enough for my tastes, and that's exactly what this is going to be. Brace yourself for history geekness and vampires doing vampir stuff - the rating will eventually get bumped to M, and it won't be for fluff.


	2. The dead and the silent

**A/N: **Hey there! Thanks for reading.

I got a couple of questions asking when was Caroline sent to. It will be explained in this chapter, but to clear things up: Caroline was meant to be sent to Mystic Falls _immediately_ after the Originals became vampires, but since I don't exactly imagine witchcraft being a perfect science, she gets there a few days too late – just a couple, but it's still long enough that Esther is dead and the Mikaelsons gone.

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><p><strong>Mystic Falls, 974<strong>

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><p>This time, Caroline did not cry.<p>

There was no need for it, really, and that wouldn't solve anything. She closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, and went on.

Caroline took her time walking around the village, poking inside each and every one of the huts, looking for whatever she could find. New clothes, she reminded herself, she needed new clothes and something to put them in, and maybe something to eat if she could find it – for all that she didn't need to eat anymore, food was always _nice_. The village was bigger than she'd had expected, but the insides were all so _small_, every room dark and confining, if well kept, and Caroline had to struggle to picture Klaus – I'm-so-much-better-than-you, uber-sophisticated Klaus Mikaelson – living in such a place.

She went through chests and cabinets, trying not to think for too long on what exactly she was doing. She had no reason to feel guilty, Caroline thought to herself; she needed clothes more than dead people would, as _weird_ as everything looked.

There were long tunics that went into a big leather satchel, and undertunics and knee-long woollen underwear that had Caroline double-check everything was clean before taking those, too. In went men's trousers because they looked comfortable, and women's dresses she couldn't run in, because they were pretty, the colors brighter than anything Caroline would have expected to see for centuries. _A bit too bright maybe, _her inner fashionista whispered in some corner of her mind_, but better than nothing_. The voice sounded exactly like Elena would have, Caroline found herself thinking, before decisively slamming the door on _that_ particular line of thought. _Moving on_.

The boots she took from a woman's corpse.

They were comfortable, Caroline decided, trying them on and walking a few experimental steps. Anything to distract her from the dead woman laying with her throat ripped open a few feet from her – and from the teenaged boy on her left, and the older man who must have been his father, and the little girl –

Oh_ God_ the little girl –

The bodies were everywhere, men and women and children, throats torn and heads almost ripped from their bodies, and it was _awful_, like some real-life horror movie, and Caroline wanted nothing more than recoil in disgust and walk away hating the people who'd done things, but she knew better.

She knew what it felt like.

The air smelled like dried blood and scared animals and rotting bodies, and it brought her back to her own transition, how _hard_ it had been; to the terrible feeling of not being in control. Caroline wasn't about to feel sorry for Klaus and his crazy family, not after _everything_, but – maybe just a little.

After that she turned away from the dead woman and made it back to the outskirts of the village, sitting down somewhere at the edge of the woods and _thinking_.

"There's no way back," she said, tasting the words on her tongue, closing her eyes to hear of that felt. _No way back_. It sounded like something the hero would say in some cheesy sci-fi movie, giving a melodramatic look at the horizon and thinking of home. Except that, of course, it was a movie and the hero _always_ got back and Caroline – Caroline wouldn't.

The hero always got back home and she wouldn't, and that was the way things were. _Okay_, she thought. She'd never been one to pursue illusions, to lie to herself. It was better to sort out everything now than drag it forever.

Caroline Forbes was no action hero, and she wasn't Lucy Bennett either. No way back meant _no way back_, nothing, nada, niente. _Accept it and move on_, her mother would say. _Would_ say because Liz wasn't there anymore, not for centuries – and, Caroline realized with a chilling shiver, might even never be. She _had_ watched her good share of cheesy sci-fi movies with Matt, knew everything about the damages of stepping on butterflies, and that her mere _existence_ would –

"Okay, Forbes," she told herself. "You are freaking out. Stop that."

Except, it was easier said than done. The thought had lodged into her brain and wouldn't get out, morbid as it was – take one wrong step in the freaking Middle Ages and one thousand years down the line, who knows what could happen. It was all so ironic, she thought. How many times back Before, when she'd still been silly naïve Caroline-the-head-cheerleader, with the low self-esteem and a crush on Matt Donovan, she'd wondered how the world would be like without her in it, and now she might even get to see it.

A world without Caroline Forbes. Would it been better or worse, boring or simpler? Would the people be happier, would her friends, her _family_ –

Yeah, that wasn't helping anyone.

"Next step," she breathed out in a whisper, in the forest that was still so _quiet_. Had the Mikaelsons scared away the animals, too? "Next step, getting the hell out of here."

Because Elijah or no Elijah, she wasn't about to remain rotting away literally _centuries_ from civilization. No sir. She had to get somewhere with _people_, somehow.

_Rome, Paris, Tokyo._

Well, she'd always wanted to get to see Europe. Even if she had to freaking _swim_, which was sounding more likely every minute. Or maybe she could steal a boat. Ship. Whatever it had been that had brought Klaus's people to Mystic Falls half a millennium before Columbus; it had to still be _there_. Or maybe she could just wait until Katherine's ancestors got back, whoever they were – wait and hide in _their_ ship, like some Anne Rice novel. Vampires in the cargo hold, sleeping in coffins and eating rats…

Okay, that maybe was a bit too much.

_Not right now_, Caroline decided. _Tomorrow_. She leaned against the closest tree, using the leather bag she'd put her new clothes in as a pillow. There were beds in the huts, or sort of beds, but it wouldn't feel right to sleep with the dead.

Caroline was still smiling at the irony of it when she fell asleep.

* * *

><p>She woke to the sound of footsteps and scared whispers, and a familiar scent in the wind. <em>Human<em>, her mind supplied, and Caroline thought nothing of it until she remembered where she was – when she was – and that there shouldn't be anyone at all, that they were all dead.

Except that apparently wasn't the case; she could hear the steady rhythm of dozens of beating hearts, the low murmur of blood running through their veins. She could smell the fear in the air, mixing with the stench of death, and she could feel someone moving closer.

_Stay still_, Caroline thought to herself. _Still and don't move_. She'd rolled on her stomach, hiding the satchel under her body, and maybe from a distance it would be enough to pass for yet another body until whoever it was went away. Playing dead seemed safer than darting away and giving herself away, especially now.

Whoever it was, they would probably be terrified at the display in the village. _Or maybe they saw it happen_. After all she'd gone through every house, and saw how many people really had lived there – too many even for five hungry new vampires. _So, survivors_, Caroline decided, cringing at how stupid she'd been. She should have it figured out that not everyone in the village had died. Klaus had even told her as much, with his ravings about doppelganger's bloodlines, and she should have remembered – you can't have a bloodline if everyone's dead.

Survivors, terrified and angry, on alert and probably crazy with fear. Survivors survivors scared out their minds, but blood was blood, warm and rich, and it had been days –

_Still_, Caroline thought again, like some sort of mantra, _don't move don't breathe don't move – _but it was too late and there was a hand touching her neck, calloused fingers brushing her skin, and she could feel the person stiffen, drawing in a sharp breath.

"_Kuik_!" There was a shout, voice too deep to belong to a woman. "_Kuik_!"

She knew what the man must have felt, the touch of a living human being. It had only been a day since she'd last fed, a short enough time to keep her skin warm and soft and her blood running hot, and how could these people know what she really was.

And now they would soon enough.

There were more shouts, words she didn't recognize, and the sound of new steps, people running, coming closer. At least four of them, Caroline decided, and at least someone with an open wound. She could smell the _blood, _and her mouth started to water, teeth turning into fangs.

_Breathe, Caroline. Breathe._

The man keep talking, muffled words she couldn't understand, and his hand was on her shoulder now, turning her around. Caroline blinked against the light of the sun, taking in the sight in front of her.

The man who'd found her looked old, with grey hair and concern clear in his pale blue eyes. He was whispering to her, soothing sounds like one would to a child, but he was frowning as he spoke, and Caroline knew he was trying to place her, remember where he'd seen her before.

_Nowhere_, she could have told him, if she'd known the words. She could have said that she wasn't one of them, a neighbor and friend and survivor, but one of the same monsters who'd slaughtered their families, killed dozens without even meaning to. _Because that's what you are_, Caroline wanted to tell the man. _You're food and we're hunters and everyone's miserable._

The old man's hands were gentle as they brushed against her shoulders and neck, searching for wounds. It was a small kindness, one she hadn't even known she'd missed until now, and Caroline let out a long sigh, wishing she could pretend for a little while longer – pretend to _belong_. But there was no way she could pass for one of these people, as nice as it would have been.

She met the man's eyes. "Thank you," she said, slowly. For worrying, for caring, for being the first human contact she'd had in days. Then Caroline rose up to her feet, and then she was gone.

She hid further in the woods and stood still as the man's excited shouts turned into fear. _Forath,_ they were screaming now, _Forath forath forath,_ disgust clear in their voices, and it wasn't hard to guess what _that_ might mean. Caroline found herself remembering one long day tied down to a chair, the coldness in her father's eyes, vervain stings on her skin. She could make up a human form through the bushes – a woman, just a few years older than Caroline herself. Their eyes met, and she let out a long scream.

Caroline felt herself shiver. She'd never – people had never screamed because of her before. She was _good_, damn it, she didn't kill people, she just wanted to live in peace, she wasn't evil – she wasn't _Klaus_.

She'd never got him, not _really_. Klaus and Damon alike, with their talks of dark sides and eternal damnation and all that bullshit she'd never really believed in, because she was sunny Caroline Forbes, bright and perky and _full of light_, and she still wanted to go to college and throw parties and cook on Sundays for her mom, and Caroline – look, Caroline _liked_ being a vampire; but still didn't much like to _think_ of herself as one.

She liked her new agility and her strength and the endless possibilities of an eternal life, but she wasn't some – some _fairytale thing_. She walked in the sun and ate eggs for breakfast and wrote school papers like a human would, with the added bonus of living forever and the hassle of bloodlust. Caroline was fine, Caroline was _great_, and now Caroline was centuries away from home, hiding in the shadows like the monster from the stories she'd never wanted to be.

* * *

><p>It was two entire days before she made it out the woods – two days of apathy and gloom and general freaking out, two days until the boredom finally outgrew any fears she might have.<p>

Two days of fires and shouts in the night, of toxic smoke that burned her skin. The people of the village looked prepared this time around – more prepared than Caroline would ever have expected, considering they didn't have centuries of vampire lore to draw on. There were night patrols in the village and vervain at every corner. They would burn it in the fires, letting out a column of smoke that made Caroline's eyes water, and spread the ashes in front of their doors, and she watched it all and thought, _good_.

It was a good thing, she'd decided, that these people learned how to defend themselves, as late as it was for that. There were no more vampires in what would become Mystic Falls – not counting Caroline herself; she could still feel the pull of Elijah's compulsion somewhere further north – but still these people would remember, and tell their children, and maybe that would be enough to save a few more lives, and it wasn't enough but it was still a start.

On the second day Caroline came out the woods, and silently told her goodbyes to the place that'd been her home for her entire life. It was also good, she told herself, that she should leave. There was nothing for her here, and no way to do anything but wait and let the world pass her by, and her half-baked plan of waiting until the villagers decided to cross the ocean again go back and joining them – well, it had never been more than sleepy delusions in the first place. And there was Mikael to consider, too – unlike his children, Caroline had no idea where he was, and she didn't much like the idea of meeting him. All in all, she could see the logic in leaving; but she would have liked the idea a lot more had it really been hers.

Because the thing was, it _wasn't_.

_You will find me, wherever you are_, Elijah had told her – compelled her; and Caroline had to wonder just how long he'd been thinking on those words for, because they were damn precise. _Wherever you are, whenever you are_. There was nothing in there that would force Caroline to drop everything and _immediately_ go look for the Originals, transforming her into some mindless compulsion-drone in case of complications – exactly what had happened – but still, she could only keep her compulsion at bay if she kept telling herself that she would go to Elijah, eventually.

_Whenever you are, you will look for us and you _will_ find me._

And apparently stopping, even for a moment – even _considering_ giving up – was not allowed. She could feel it grow stronger by the minute, tugging at her like some invisible thread, pulling her towards Elijah – and his brothers, and Rebekah, and _Klaus_.

And wasn't that just _perfect_.

But there was one thing Elijah had forgotten, or maybe he hadn't considered it at all – after all, she hadn't been his_ first choice_. Not her, not Caroline Forbes, she was never _anyone_'s first choice –

anyone but Klaus's, for all_ that_ was worth –

she was never anyone's first choice, not when Elena was around. And if Elijah had prepared his little speech for Elena, if he'd ever had the gall to compel perfect Elena Gilbert in the first place, then he would have expected Elena to obey. For all of her stubbornness, Elena was the kind of girl who liked to quietly wait out the storm and wait for someone to make a new way.

Caroline made her own way. In the summer after tenth grade she'd made head cheerleader because she'd gotten one over soon-to-be-senior Shelley Humphrey over a dress code mishap of all things. Caroline changed the rules and made new ones and she would do it again now, for the last time.

_Look at me Elijah_, she thought to herself, and smiled. _Screwing up all you plans_.

Caroline started to walk.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **Hi again. Sorry this is so short – it was the only stopping point I could find, since next chapter is a time skip (and also will have actual Originals in it).  
>Updates will be every week or so, and, just so you know, reviews really get me going. I <em>know<em> every fic writer on this site says this, but there's really nothing like getting feedback, and I thank you for yours.


	3. The outlanders

**THIS IS A REPOST - apparently chapter 3 just disappeared for some reason. What_ever_.**

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><p><strong>AN:** So, this is the last of the 'introductory' Caroline chapters, and I'm SO glad it's out the way. Reminder: this chapter picks up a few years after the last one, with flashbacks explaining what happened in the meanwhile. Enjoy!

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><p><strong>Yaroslavl, 985 AD<strong>

* * *

><p>It was raining on the day the messenger arrived, a warm, heavy summer rain that once upon a time would maybe have reminded Caroline of Labor Day's weekends spent at her dad's house down in Georgia, of the way the air got so thick in the midafternoons, and of the time she got caught in a thunderstorm and had to run home with water in her shoes, drenched clothes sticking to her body like a second skin.<p>

The rain would've reminded her of home, once, but she didn't much like to think of that anymore.

It rained often in the summers here – almost every other day, sudden and violent storms that spoiled what could have been her only warm days, and left her almost looking forward to the winter snows. It was the weather, she'd decided early on, that made the thought of home unbearable. What sense had a special occasion when it came every other day? All the magic had gone from it – it soured her memories, making her want to forget.

_And that's all_, Caroline thought defiantly to herself. The whole, only reason why she didn't want to remember home – the stupid rain. It _definitely_ had nothing to do with the _other_ reason she'd stopped thinking of home, that terrible morning when she'd woken up and couldn't remember – she _couldn't,_ no matter how much she tried – had her mom's birthday been on June fourth, or the ninth?

It was such a stupid little thing, really. Back home, she'd always got confused on that particular day; she'd completely forgotten the exact date three or four times, at least. Caroline remembered that one time in sixth grade when she'd had to take out her planner and check it, and so it was nothing, really, it was just a birthday –

But the thing was, she couldn't just _check_ things, not anymore. She couldn't look in her phone of she forgot something, or look through her things from the past years, or call Dad if she really got desperate. She couldn't do any of these things because her whole life was _gone_; and so Caroline just locked her entire life in some forgotten part of her brain, as if scared that her memories would wear out. She merely existed, from one day to the next; and it wasn't such a bad way to live, in the end – not _really_.

Until the day the rider strode into town, hungry and exhausted after weeks on the road, bringing the message she'd waited for so long.

It was the middle of the morning in the house of Guba Ontonovich, who'd been Caroline's host for the past few years. Not many people where around – rain or not rain, there was work to be done – and so Caroline was more than surprised when one of the servants came knocking at her door.

"Mistress," the girl said, breathless, "there's a rider, a foreigner, asking for you."

And then Caroline thought – could it be? Could it _finally_ be?

"Well, what are you waiting for?" she asked the girl. "Send him in."

It was only later, standing face to face by the light of the window, that Caroline realized she _knew_ this man. They'd met before, when she'd spent time in his town on her long journey west, trying to come to terms with the new world she'd found herself in. The man's name was Ilig, and Caroline remembered him as the young boy, barely a man, who'd taught her the words for all kinds of birds on a cold winter night, and shown her how to work his hunter's bow. He'd been infatuated with her back then; and now, with the passage of time and his harsh life, he looked twice as old as she did.

"_Gospozha_," Ilig began in his broken accent. Caroline tried to remember if he was supposed to have the same memories of their past meetings than she did – but probably not. She'd never learned Illig's language _that_ well, and her compulsion had been rough at best and too heavy at worst.

"The foreigners have arrived," he said. "The one you talked about, four men, one woman. They came through the forest, like you said."

Caroline let out a long breath. "Are you sure?" she asked. "Are you _absolutely_ sure?"

She'd gotten another messenger one night, another rider from the same town as this one, telling her about a mysterious group of five outlanders. But once Caroline had made it back to the eastern towns, all but running the whole way, she'd found out that the foreigners were all men, and none of them had the pale skin and the hair of the Norsemen of the north.

That had been disappointing; even more when she'd returned to her home in Chernigov and the life she'd built for herself, and noticed all the renewed stares and the whispers following her. Her sudden flight hadn't gone unnoticed, and Caroline had been forced to leave after that, this time for good. After all, as much as Caroline enjoyed Chernigov, she had to deal with enough curiosity as an unmarried woman with no father; it wouldn't help her to add gossip on top of that.

So she had left in the night once again, telling herself that she would've had to leave in a year anyway, and settled in a new house and a new life, closer to where the Originals would pass through, whenever they finally managed to leave the wilderness for some place with people. _Eventually_.

That had been three years ago.

And she'd really, _really_ didn't feel like throwing away her entire life, again, if this turned up to be another false alarm.

Except –

"…and the woman has long pale hair," Ilig said, finishing his description. It was them, Caroline decided. It _had_ to be.

"And how long ago was that?" she asked.

"They arrived the night after I left."

That was good; it meant her compulsion had held. The first time around, Caroline had made pretty damn sure every man or woman in every town along the river would know to send a message as soon as the Originals arrived, left enough gold to pay for the best horse and the fastest boat.

Hopefully, that would be enough – after years of lonely wanderings, the allure of civilization should be enough to keep the Mikaelsons in one place long enough for Caroline to get to them.

If they didn't kill everyone first.

After all, Ilig's news was old, and there was no telling what could have happened in the meanwhile. Idly, Caroline wondered what she would find in the place that had been home for so short a time – if it would still be standing, or if she was to assist to another massacre like the one she'd seen in Mystic Falls, years ago.

_And now, _she thought_. Now it finally starts._

* * *

><p>The first days had been hard.<p>

Caroline left the village by the falls on a clear, warm morning, and told herself she would never look back; but the reality of things wasn't as easy as she'd hoped. Traveling through the endless forest was slow, and terribly frustrating, and every day was more boring than the last.

And also, she missed home terribly.

It started always the same way – Caroline would slip and fall down, or walk for half the morning in the wrong direction, or get her clothes ripped on some stray bush, and curse out loud and think something silly; something like _I can't wait to get home and take a bath_, or _wait until I tell Bonnie about this_, and it would hit her all over again.

It would go better, Caroline decided on the fifth day of her march, if she could've actually _run_. What was the point in being a vampire, she thought, annoyed, if she had to walk as slowly as a human – the trees were thick with no paths to speak of, and it really wouldn't do to travel a thousand years only to die impaled on a stupid branch because she'd running too fast. No, thanks.

So Caroline walked, and she waited, and she made plans.

_You will find me_, Elijah had told her – no, he'd _ordered_, the _asshole_ – but he really hadn't planned it all that well. Lack of planning, or maybe he'd just been desperate, but the point still remained. Caroline's brush with the locals, as short as it had been, had made her realize something she'd never thought about before - finding the Originals, right now, would be pointless.

_They could not understand each other_. Not only that, but newborn vampires or not, the Mikaelsons were still immortal, and Caroline was not. They would be scared, ready to do anything to protect themselves. They were five, and Caroline was alone. An encounter had all the potential to become very dangerous very quickly, and if Caroline had no plains whatsoever to die killed by a tree, she found the idea of being offed by a baby Klaus even worse.

Just the thought had her snickering hysterically.

_Baby Klaus_.

Whatever.

That night, Caroline had realized she could no longer feel Elijah as clearly as she had before. The weight of his compulsion was still on her, heavy around her chest, but where she'd been able to pinpoint his exact location before, Caroline could now only feel a vague presence somewhere north-east. She wondered if the Originals really planned to follow the coast up to New England and even further north, before realizing that _of course_ they would. They were lost in a foreign land, with no maps to speak of and no idea where to find another corner of civilization. She felt the briefest sting of guilt for a moment, before resolutely pushing it away. Yes, the Mikaelsons were lost, but they were also _deadly_, and she owed them nothing.

_Good luck with that_, Caroline thought instead, before getting back to her own itinerary; or, as she liked to call it, operation: get out the fucking forest, as soon as possible.

It was around the tenth day that the woods started to get more thin, trees smaller and further apart. Caroline's steps took on a renewed spring; and when the forest finally disappeared from her sight, she let out a small _whoop_ of joy in seeing the edge of a flat plain. It was still a boring landscape, she decided, but at least it was a different kind of boring. For now, it would do.

The days went by faster after that.

If only two years ago someone had told Caroline Forbes that her post-graduation plans would include hiking her way across North America, she would – well, it would never have happened in the first place. No one who knew anything about Caroline, even post-transition, badass vampire Caroline, would have come up with such a _stupid_ idea.

And _still_, look at her now.

Once out on the plains, things were easier. She for as long as she wanted, basking in the freedom of it, occasionally stopping to admire a field of wildflowers, maybe, or a pretty purple sunset. After the incident at the Originals' village Caroline had decided to avoid any other natives at all costs – and _seriously_, none of her history classes had prepared her to expect so _many_ people – but she didn't mind the long detours. The variety of her surrounding made it easier to distract from boredom or homesickness, and somewhere along the way Caroline had decided to consider this like the road trip she'd never got to do, lack of _actual_ roads be damned.

So what if she couldn't go to Hilton Head or Atlanta or Miami and all the cities she'd wanted to see – there was nothing stopping her from seeing the dawn on the Grand Canyon, or taking a swim in the Pacific. It was absolute freedom, and Caroline couldn't deny that the idea of being the only person around to enjoy it all had its charm. She could understand Klaus now, lonely king of his dark kingdom, all-powerful and alone for centuries; see why he could think himself above everyone else. It was an easy conclusion to jump to.

Caroline lost count of the days; weeks became months as the seasons changed and she made her way further north, step after step. It had been an unconscious decision at first, but later on, sleepless night after sleepless night, she'd had made a blurred idea into a solid plan – or as solid as it could have been, anyway. The bottom line was, simply, that if she _really_ had to cross an ocean out of the continent, she wasn't going to _swim_ through it. Vampire or not, she would end up sinking and becoming fish food and – ew, _no_.

Plus, the Originals would come that way eventually, with even less knowledge of the world around them than Caroline had. She did know the _future_ after all, knew more about being a vampire than they did – and maybe the idea of lording her knowledge over Klaus enticed her just a little. And Elijah, damn him. And _Rebekah_ –

So, okay, maybe that had been what had really tipped the scale. So sue her. She'd been sent one thousand year in the past _against her will_ because of the Mikaelsons' screw-ups – she was allowed to be a little petty about it.

And so well, that had been the plan. Usually, Caroline thrived with plans; it was indecision that always did her in. Once she had everything organized things would go smoothly; then planning was the hardest part.

Caroline had been expecting the next part to be easy.

It had been anything but.

* * *

><p>Caroline had never this far north, but she'd been expecting the cold, planned for it. She'd counted on the winter, but she'd never really understood how hard it would get.<p>

It was stupid, in hindsight – one of the most stupid things she'd ever done, counting her brushes with drunk driving sophomore year _and_ all the time she'd agreed to play Klaus bait. It was irresponsible and silly and she'd done it anyway, completely forgetting, _again_, that she now lived in a world without technology – without even houses. Caroline had planned around the shortening of the days, observed the way the golden lights of early autumn faded into grey tints all of a sudden, the way the ground felt cold and icy under her fingertips. She'd stared enchanted as the first coat of thick snow covered the world around her and draped her worn clothes tighter around her body, shivering.

After that – well, she'd waited some more. Caroline had stuck to the coast, were it was warmer, and waited as the morning air got colder and colder, wind rough against her red face. Only when she was sure it must be _really_ winter – the kind of proper winter when it would maybe snow even in Virginia, the winter of Christmastime and her mother's fruitcake that always tasted odd but was still perfect – only then she'd gone up the coastline to the point where the sea was shallow and frozen over, waters moving slowly under the ice, a new world on the other side.

_Well_, she thought, _here goes nothing_.

When Caroline had been in seventh grade, some guy had made headlines for walking through the frozen sea from Alaska to Russia – and getting arrested right after. Liz had muttered some comment about stuck-up idiot bureaucracy, and Caroline still remembered it almost six years later. She also remembered how it'd taken the guy the better part of two weeks – but then again, _he_ had been only human.

It took _Caroline_ all of three days, three days of hunger and careful steps and running with ghostly steps where the ice was thin. She thought she'd done pretty well, everything considered; once on the other side, she thought the worst was over. Silly, naïve Caroline.

First of all, everything was so disgustingly _big_. Her whole world was an endless horizon, vast and frozen, and it would take her days to go around some peek or mountain – only to realize she'd been going in the wrong direction all along. More important, it was still the middle of winter.

One year ago – or maybe longer, actually, she'd gained some more months traveling through time – one year ago, or close enough, she'd been dressing up for yet another silly town event, and that had been the last time things had really been _good_, before Tyler tried to one-up Klaus and he'd killed Carol Loockwood, and everything had gone to hell ridiculously quickly after that. Last December she'd been celebrating Christmas drinking champagne and looking at paintings of snowflakes, and now she was in the middle of freaking Siberia among cold and ice and not a living being for hundreds of miles.

It made her feel so small – and so very _hungry_.

It made her hysteric, paranoid. It made her _scared_. Caroline remembered Stefan and Damon's stories of vampires buried under the old church, slowly desiccating, and wondered how long she had before becoming one of those _things_. After that she told herself that she was stupid for always coming up with the worst-case scenario – and every day she did it again.

She spent her days walking carefully, afraid to waste energy in any way, curled to sleep at sunset hoping the next morning would bring a clear sky with the sun to lead the way; and maybe every once in a while she would have a good day, felt the presence of some small animal that was enough to keep her going for another few weeks. White foxes and small raccoons and, on one memorable occasion, a bear curled under the snow – and she would drink greedily, glad for whatever small flicker of life she could steal. She'd never felt more of a parasite in her life.

The months went by day after day, agonizingly slowly, and the cold and the snows had almost melted when Caroline raised her head to see a flat plain on the horizon, covered in a green, thick forest and she knew there were _people_ beyond that – and she'd finally, finally _made it_.

* * *

><p>The first man Caroline met in the Old World was a hunter named Bihar, who lived on his family's farm in a small outpost on the Kama river. He must have been ten years younger than Caroline's father, though he looked much older; a widower with three sister, one brother, and too many young nephews to count.<p>

The first man Caroline met in the Old World was a hunter named Bihar, who found her in the wilds and brought her to his home – and she killed him, and then burned his house down.

It went like this: it was not high summer yet, but close enough. The days were longer and warm by the time Caroline crossed over the Urals in her tattered clothes, and told herself she wouldn't stop until she found something – anything – a village, a town, even a hut in the middle of nowhere. It was idiotic of her, even more stupid than going north of the arctic circle in winter. That one had been risky, but had to be done, and her life had been the only one she'd risked. Here and now, it wasn't her life she'd gambled with and lost.

If she'd been more rested, maybe, it wouldn't have happened. Rested and aware and in control of herself, but she'd been thirsty – she'd been so thirsty and tired and the man had been bleeding from his own wounds, some fresh hunting injury. She'd told him to get away but he couldn't understand her and he would not leave; and in the end Caroline had swallowed her screams with his blood and cried as she wiped the red off her mouth and thought _this can't be happening_, except it was.

The house she had to burn to cover her tracks. If there was a thing Caroline was good at, besides planning, were obsessive freak-outs – she had it all detailed to the second, the angry mob that would come looking for her once it became common knowledge that a strange death had happened only a day after she'd been found. No, she decided, it had to look like an accident – and what kind of person made her, Caroline wondered later, who'd destroyed an entire family's home and livelihood to save her own skin.

_A monster_, she'd wanted to say then, harsh and judgmental, condemning herself for her sins like any god girl with a sense of right and wrong ought to; but the word would not come. The thing was – Caroline knew she wasn't a monster, no matter how much she felt like she should think of herself as a bad guy. She'd spent a good part of the last two years cleaning up after Elena's mistakes, and Stefan's – and if none of them were _bad_, then Caroline most definitely wasn't either.

She'd made her own mess and cleaned it up – and what did _that_ make her?

_A survivor_, a voice in her head spoke up; and it sounded like Katherine Pierce and Klaus and Damon, all in the same breath. A _survivor_. Caroline wasn't sure if she really liked this world, but she'd take it.

After the fire, Caroline joined Bihar's family in their journey to the neighbor town of Zhukotin, feeling disgustingly dirty all the while. She put the memory of her latest murder in a small corner of her mind right next to the one reserved for her memories of Liz and Miranda Gilbert's cherry cake, and Matt's eleventh birthday party; and Caroline told herself she would never think about the man's death again, of the taste of his blood on her lips and the hectic rhythm of his last heartbeats.

On some days, she did think of it; but mostly she forgot.

* * *

><p>From that moment on, Caroline's life became one long lie after the other.<p>

In Zhukotin she was a foreign woman with no name. The locals all seemed fascinated by her, for reasons she did not understand at first – and later on, once she'd learned enough of their language, Ilig the leatherworker's son explained her that it was because she looked exotic to their eyes. He himself had dark eyes and light brown skin, and he told Caroline that, while the people from the west looked like her, they'd only seen their merchants, never their women. _Curiosity, then_, Caroline realized. That she could handle.

Curious though they might be, the villagers were also kind. They gave her a place to stay in exchange for work that came all too easy to her, and humored her as she tried to learn how to speak the local language, some dialect of Arabic that was awkward and incredibly hard to Caroline's ears, but she'd had learned the hard way on her too-brief New York trip how much language was an essential element of compulsion, and she wanted to make sure she could hide her tracks if she wanted to.

The young men who seemed so eager to help her _practice_ made for great test subjects, and once she felt she'd learned enough, Caroline set to ensure that she would be informed of the Originals' arrival, and completely forgotten in the meanwhile. It worked well enough, and she left soon enough after that. Nice and relaxing as the town had been, it was also more boring than Mystic Falls on its slowest day, and if Caroline had to wait any longer, then she would wait in style.

In the years following, she wandered some more; this time without a purpose but her own whims. She went south to Korchev on the Black Sea, where the air was hot and humid and ships left every day for Byzantium with their colorful flags and holds full of treasures. She remained in the city more than a year, perfecting the story that quickly became her go-to cover – that of the rebellious daughter of a rich merchant from the Empire, sent to foster in the barbaric north until she could be properly married. It was scandalous enough to satisfy every gossiper, and allowed Caroline to buy herself time as she tried to learn yet a new language.

In Peremyshl she looked for what the descendants of the Norsemen who'd descended from the north so many years ago, or whatever remained of them. They'd taken up Slavic names and Byzantine customs and still some of them remembered their old language and tradition – and, more important, they remembered their kinsmen who'd gone back to their homeland to join an expedition that would cross the ocean.

"They were all fools," said one of the elders, who was old enough to remember clearly what he was talking about. His name had been Helgi, but he'd changed it to Oleg and now called himself a man of the prince, lording over the poorer villagers and the farmers of the Rus'. He was also a kind soul who'd decided to do a favor to an old customer and take in his wayward daughter; and Caroline was finding his hospitality wonderful – it was a shame he wouldn't remember her after she was gone.

"My father's cousin was one of them," he continued, shaking his head – and kinda remembering Caroline of the disappointed look old Mr. Tanner would throw to a student who acted particularly stupid. She briefly wondered what Mr. Tanner would think of her crash course in history – except _that_ brought back memories of the history teacher she'd actually liked, and how he'd ended up going crazy and killing her dad, and _nope_.

"They could've had everything, and they threw it away for their new world." Oleg gestured at the room around him – decent enough for petty nobility, Caroline decided, and a five-stars suite compared to how ninety-seven percent of the population must be living. Well, he wasn't wrong – it _was_ better than the huts in the Originals' village. "They must be all dead by now."

Well, _most_ of them, anyway.

After Peremyshl came Kiev – and then Novgorod and Voin', and the cities in between. Caroline made sure to never overstay her welcome – never more than three years, or she might raise suspicions. She lived her new life and thought of the old one every day until she decided not to; and her story stayed the same, though she added new details at every turn. Now that her accent no longer sounded foreigner she dropped her original identity – in hindsight, posing as a Greek woman had created more unnecessary attention than she would have preferred. She was now Elisava Belaia – Caroline had picked the name thinking of her mother, of all that she'd been trying to lock away that part of her life - daughter of a local merchant, and newly arrived to the city of Chernigov, where the first of her messenger from the east found her, some six months later.

A false alarm; but still, it remembered Caroline that the arrival of Klaus and his family couldn't be that far in time. She relocated closer, and waited.

And when Ilig came looking for her in Yaroslavl that rainy summer morning, Caroline knew that one big chapter of her life was closing forever; and a new one was about to start.

* * *

><p>Caroline left Yaroslavl in a rush, not even bothering taking her things. Her hosts would know to keep her room in the exact way she'd left it, and whatever happened, she knew she'd be back soon anyway.<p>

She left Ilig behind, with instruction to pack all of her trinkets and her warmest clothes and sell them at the market in Rostov before returning home, and keep the money. He'd delivered his message well, Caroline decided, and she would not need those things anymore, _especially_ the clothes. Whatever it would happen with the Originals in the next few days, she had no intention to see another Russian winter for a very long time.

The last time she'd made this journey everything had been covered in snow; the time before that had been a decade ago – and still, the lands and the villages she passed on the way had changed very little from the first time Caroline had been there, if not at all. It was the nature of this place, she'd had learned soon enough, years ago – year after year, the cold would come and leave the people weary and tired, and everything would stay the same.

It had seemed so sad back then; now, the thought was almost a comfort to Caroline. It had taken her so long to adapt to this brave new world; it wouldn't do for it to change too soon.

It was well into the night when she finally reached her destination, running faster than human eyes could see, and breathless from the effort. Zhukotin wasn't the biggest town around nor the closest to the mountains, but its position on the river made it the easiest for newcomers to find. That, Caroline remembered, and the _other_ settlement on the river, the farmer further east – that one was nothing but ashes.

She walked in slowly, taking in her surroundings. Everything looked normal – the houses were exactly as she remembered, and new fields had been plowed, letting the old ones rest. Nothing looked wrong that Caroline could see, and she relaxed slightly.

Once inside the town proper, she found the chieftain's house quickly. The old one had died since her last visit, but the house belonged to the family, and Caroline had been invited inside before. The new elder of the town, a younger brother to the old chieftain, took Caroline's sudden appearance in his house quite well.

"Where are them?" she asked, straight to the point. Not that she could be anything but – their language was as direct as Caroline remembered, and still every bit as limiting. "The outlanders?"

The chieftain barely blinked at seeing Caroline, and she found herself smiling a wry smile. Yes, she had definitely gone overboard with the compulsion, and didn't really know whether to feel satisfied or slightly repulsed by the results. Then again, it seemed to have worked well.

"Wait, has anyone gone missing?" Caroline added quickly, before he could speak. "Left the town in the last few days?" Just because things _looked_ peaceful it didn't mean they _were_.

"We put the foreigner in the barn by the river," the he said, voice flat and mechanical. They would have – Caroline had left specific instruction to act hospitable and _stay the hell away_. "They come and go as they like. And a party of hunters has not returned yet, but they haven't been away long."

_Yeah, sure_, Caroline thought, hoping that wouldn't be much of a mess to dispose of – the first time had been enough. "Wonderful," she said instead, and left, knowing that the man would not remember talking to her – in fact, he probably would not remember waking up in the middle of the night at all.

The barn by the river was the smallest in the town, and barely a quarter full with food, and – Caroline halted mid-step, head pulsing, the old feeling of breathlessness back after so many years. It was them – it _had_ to be.

_Well, looks like I found you, Elijah_, she thought. Except it hadn't gone that way at all – _he_ had come to _her_, they all had, even if they didn't know it yet. Caroline took one long step to the door and then another, peeking inside; and she had to bite down on her lip to avoid smiling at what she'd seen.

Inside the room, looking pale and haggard and every bit like the dead they all should be, were five people. Their faces were familiar, but everything else – from the incredulous look in their eyes to their nervous attitude and clothes that were nothing more than rags –

Everything else was _wrong_, so incredibly wrong.

Caroline took one last step as confidently as she could, exaggeratedly aware of the weight of her own clothes on her skin, warm and embroidered; and of the way the pale light of the half-moon must be shining on her hair, messy after the long trip but still healthy and clean. _I got this_, Caroline thought to herself, putting her best Miss Mystic smile on. It was Homecoming, and she was the head cheerleader showing around a bunch of freshmen.

She _had_ this and they'd come to _her_, and she would play by her own rules.

_Game on._

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **sooo glad this is out the way. I guess this chapters marks the end of Caroline's solo journey, and I'm terribly excited I'll finally get to write Originals interactions *rubs hands in glee* I was really nervous about these first few chapters because there's a thin line between establishing a story/characters and a straight-up info dump; I hope it works well enough.

Speaking of the next part, I got an anon review asking about Elijah and Caroline relationship in this fic – it's quite charged. She is _pissed_ at him – though the version of Elijah she was mad at is gone, and right now she's definitely the more Machiavellian of the two. As for Caroline/Klaus, that will also be probably unusual – after all, this Caroline is used to 21th century Klaus, who's very different from, uhm, Baby Klaus.  
>Also, for future reference, if you feel like asking questions on anon, I obviously can't answer privately here so consider sending me a ask over at tumblr if that's easier for you.<p>

Cheers!

* * *

><p><span>a note on history if you feel like it:<span>

The bit I wrote in about Klaus's parents being from East Europe is what's written on the TVD wikia according to canon sources. You may be thinking that sounds fishy as hell and it _does – _I seriously doubt JP & Co did in-depth, if any, research for this; but they must have gotten lucky because this story is actually historically plausible.

It's a pet theory of most medievalists that the upper class of ninth/tenth century Poland/Ukraine/Russia were actually Vikings who went native pretty damn fast; and that's the history background I'm using in this story. Obviously the idea that Esther and Mikael, Scandinavian colonies in Poland or whatever, went _back_ north to join some Viking expedition is seriously stretching the limit of everyone's disbelief, but I don't think they thought this through – they just happened to come up with a background that might be historically accurate after some heavy fanwanking.

And that's me. I'm the fanwanker.


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